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At Dunpendyr gathered the greybearded, hardfaced mormaers of the north. The eleven rebel kings were ridding hard to Sorhaute, there to lick their wounds and weigh their options. But at Dunpendyr, the war was over; they gathered to bury their king.
A descendent of Cruithne son of Cing, king of the Gododdin through his father, might banner the North from the isle of Unst to Lammermuir. A man of such a lineage is not slain without consequence. It was as if the earth itself knew, and the grim weight of the day made the clouds hang low and heavy and dark. When a messanger came riding over the horizon, to his eyes the stone walls and thatched houses of Dunpendyr were dark and grey with fog and dribbling rain. Upon the terraced hilltop, they slumped loomingly from the general gloom like half-formed things.
In a smoke filled room, two men watched a bondswoman fiddle with the fire, patiently feeding it small branches. Finally, one of them told her it was good enough, waving her gruffly out. The spattering rain turned to mist, and in the resulting quiet, they heard the dripping off wet thatch shedding runoff onto the stones, and the rustling of tiny scavengers in the rushes.
"When can we expect the boy," the older man asked. He was Arguth, King Lot's oldest mormaer, a man who calcified as he aged rather than shrivelled.
His companion grimaced. "The day after tomorrow, perhaps. He crossed the Nene three days ago, as our man had it."
"You were there," Arguth said, his tone nearly accusatory, "At Terrabil. How did he comport himself?"
Ewein Leonell— for that was the name of this knight of Orkney— furrowed his brow. "Well enough, I think. I was on the flank, you understand. He did not flee, at least, when the men broke."
"Hm." A long pause followed. Then finally, "you sound surprised."
Ewein hesitated. Arguth was a great mormaer of his own territory; he owed no allegiance to this untried youth simply on the basis of his parentage. Ewein however was pledged to Orkney, and one great swordstroke on the field of Terrabil had made this princeling his lord.
"Speaking only between ourselves," he began slowly, "I've known him distantly. He was raised partly in Orkney itself, and I stayed in the family's lands, when I wasn't elsewhere."
"Unpromising?" Arguth asked gruffly.
"Not… unpromising," Ewein paused between each word, as if taking great care in choosing each one. "Not unpromising. Perhaps… unserious. He rides well, but only cares to learn tricks. Speaks several languages but says only foolish things in all of them. He trades his father's cattle for foreign luxuries, and runs merry through the fens wearing Seres silk and all the perfumes of Arabia. This is only to say— He was reared so strangely, you know."
"I've been in the field many years," Arguth said gruffly. "I have not had occasion to dine with my king as you have."
"He spent several years in the south," Ewein clarified. "Ah, very far south, actually. Rome."
"Lot would never send his son and heir to Rome."
Ewein frowned. "It was an accident. His ship was lost. For several years we— the family— believed him to be dead, and one of Lot's younger sons was named. I don't recall which. But the boy— Gawain, that is— couldn't have been more than ten when he went away. It was only a year ago that he made his way back. He can hardly well remember the land of his birth."
"Nor it remember him," pronounced Arguth with a grimace. There was a long, heavy pause. "What of… the other boys?"
Ewein frowned nervously. "They are very young."
"This Gawain is very young."
To this, Ewein did not reply. Perhaps he may have, given a long enough pause to consider, he would have. But from outside came the rushing of feet, raised and questioning voices muffled by rain, and finally, as they were both rising to their feet, a man of Arguth's household in the doorway.
"My lord," he said, "the prince of Orkney is come."
Though mounted proud and upright before the gates of Dunpendyr, by the time the many mormaers and warriors had assembled to greet him, Gawain had dismounted. His horse, whose rains he had not yet given over, was a great red beast of an animal which made its owner look an even slighter figure, especially rain-soaked as he was, and weary from days of hard riding.
Clenching the reins, he stood alone in the yard, encircled by his father's retainers and their bondsmen. They studied him, and he them, for an interminable space. Finally his horse stamped his tired feet and shook his wild-maned head, and the stillness broke. An old bondsman and his boy took charge of the beast, leading it off to slighly damp hay and slightly less damp quarters.
A low fog settled over the hill, blanketting the oak pallisades and earthen ramparts, the thatch-rooved granaries and roundhouses, smithies and barrows, and the long greathall into which Gawain was led.
"Come," said the mormaer Marthan, "warm yourself by the fire. Your clothes are fit for Albion, perhaps, but not Lothian."
He went without protest, and did not soon emerge again.
"Where is Gareth?" Gawain asked, when they were finally all alone. He had taken them up on a neighboring hill, where they could watch the bondsmen digging and gathering stone. The weather was better than it had been last week, and his brothers, escorted by the rest of his father's old mormaers and retainers, had approached Dunpendyr in a haze of weak sunlight.
"Mother didn't want him to come," Gaheris supplied. "He can't travel without her yet, she said."
Agravaine kicked at a clump of dirt. "And mother didn't want to come, uhm, because she said she can't, uhm, stand the sight of you."
"That's not true," Gaheris said quickly. "Agravaine is a liar. Father said we should strike him if he lies." Then, looking at the diggers yonder, he promptly burst into tears.
The older two cast glances to him, one distantly concerned and the other scornful, then stalked away to hold their own council.
"It's good he didn't come. Gaheris shouldn't have come either," Gawain said. Then, all at once as if to have out with it and be done: "I pledged myself to our uncle. After the battle. I've promised all our kinsmen, too. All who are fighting age; and you've both come here, so you can't be children anymore. You'll have to come with me. As soon as— as soon as we've finished here."
Agravaine turned pale. He turned a wide-eyed, incredulous stare to Gawain. "What have you done it for? You— you— don't you know who our father died fighting?"
"I was there, wasn't I?"
"You're a— a cowardly snake," Agravaine pronounced, shaking with horrified offense. "A Roman traitor. Gaheris! Gaheris, he's a traitor! A trai— ow!"
His cries, which had been escalating in volume, were cut off abruptly by a blow. They were of equal size, but Gawain was a swifter and surer fighter, even in a dirty scrap. Agravaine got in a good kick to the shin, and jabbed his fingers painfully into his brother's side, but soon he was pined prone with Gawain's knee on his back and his own cloak stuffed against his mouth to muffle him. He squirmed against the rough gag until Gawain grabbed his arm and twisted, forcing him, teary-eyed, to limply relent.
"You don't understand at all, do you?" Gawain demanded. His hair had come loose and, unbrushed, ringed wildly about his face like a mane. "You're such a little fool. Do you want to die, you infant?"
Agravaine shook his head.
Gawain was unpacified. "You don't understand at all the position we're in, do you? You stay in the nursery of Nordelone and pretend there is no world outside of Orkney. You think you're untouchable because you're the great king's son. The great king is dead. There won't be another."
Sputtering on his own cloak, which Gawain had relaxed his grip on, Agravaine frowned. "You're going to be king."
"Get up," Gawain said, and stood. "Get up. Look there."
Agravaine rushed to his feet, rubbing his arm. "At the— digging?"
"Yes. Look at the barrows. That one there holds our grandfather, and our great uncle. That holds two kinsmen of Arguth, and the other holds a grea warrior of our grandfather's day. Beneath them are still older kings, more ancient warriors. The greybearded men trace our line back a thousand years and more, all buried like that. Stone coffins in long stone cairns, backfilled with sand and ringed with runestones and encased in crystal pebbles."
"I know all this," said Agravaine, surly.
"Do you think you'll be buried like that?" Gawain asked plainly.
"Well, I— I don't know. I suppose."
"I don't. We've lost this war, you know. Arthur is going to be king. King of the Britons."
Agravaine frowned deeper. "But we're not Britons. Not all the way, anyhow."
"it's a better thing to be than Saxon," Gawain said sharply. "Which is what we all will be, if we keep fighting. I've ridden up and down the country and I know how things stand. A Saxon fleet is ready to land in the north, here. Our armies are shattered. If we don't meet them together, we will fall. And they won't give us the option to swear fealty; don't you remember the stories old men tell?"
A great banquet on the plains, long, treasonous knives, Eu nimet saxas— yes, of course he remembered. "They won't listen to you. The mormaers. They, they think— they'll say— you broke bread with your father's killer."
"Arthur didn't kill Lot," Gawain said firmly. "He didn't. He thinks it was a terrible thing, father being struck down, and he's building a monument in his honour. We'll see it, when we go to court, and you'll tell everyone about it, alright? Do you understand? Do you?"
Agravaine scowled. "I'm not a child. I understand, all right. Arthur didn't kill father, so you can bend the knee and, and carry his stupid banner and serve his wine, and, and— but he's dead! He's dead isn't he, so someone killed him!"
"Yes, Agravaine, someone killed him. How bright of you to notice," Gawain snapped. Then, with a visible effort to control himself, he stepped back and forced his shoulders down. "I saw the knight who struck him. I remembered his arms and his shield, and I found out, later, his name. It's Pellinore, of Listenoise."
The name hung in the air, an invisible third between them. Across the way, they could just see the diggers put down their tools, and the stonecutters and masons descend to place their corner-posts. "You… will you kill him?"
Gawain laughed. On an older man it would've sounded bitter, but in his unsteady infant tenor it emerged hysterical. "Well, I'm in a bit of a difficult situation, there. You see, I've sworn to our mormaers that I will. And, ah, I've sworn to our uncle that I won't."
"Oh," said Agravaine. He furrowed his brow. "What will you do?"
"I won't do anything. One son's venegance is as good as anothers, where family honor is concerned. And like I said," Gawain wouldn't look at him. His voice was very flat and cold. "Like I said, you gave up the protection of childhood when you came here. I'm sorry, by the way."
Agravaine stared sidelong with open-mouthed astonishment. "But— Gawain, I, I couldn't— I mean to say, I'm not a knight, yet. You'd, you'd kill me, setting me against him!"
"Is it true? What Gaheris said? Are you a liar?"
"I— no, I—"
"A sneak? A dishonorable little coward? It's what I've heard. A—"
Now it was Agravaine's turn to silence his brother by physical blows, throwing a wild fist into his cheek. If he was stunned, it didn't hold, and soon they were on the ground again, and Gawain was going to pin him again. Lashing out blindly, he jabbed an elbow into Gawain's side, heard a wince and felt, for a moment, the grip on him relax. He wrested free a fist and drove it into the same spot, just under the ribs, and felt his opponent's strength give.
With a warlike whoop, Agravaine sprung free and set upon his brother. Then he heard someone shrieking and felt fingers graze his back, then find purchase and tug. Suddenly regaining some awareness, he numbly allowed himself to be pulled.
"You're bleeding!" That's what Gaheris had been yelling. "You're bleeding, you're bleeding!"
Indeed, a red stain was spreading on Gawain's sky blue tunic. Gawain, supine, raised himself to rest on a bent arm. His fingers shook, though not too badly, as they made a tentative assessment of the area. At the slightest pressure he hissed through gritted teeth, and withdrew his now redstained hand.
"I think you've— you've definitely re-opened that," Gawain said. "Are ah, do you see anywhere else? Is my shoulder…"
Gaheris shook his head in mute horror.
"I didn't know. I didn't know you were hurt," Agravaine said, looking pale. "I— I'm sorry."
"Don't be," said Gawain, pale himself but smiling in a tight, grim way. "You won."
"It wasn't honorable," Agravaine protested weakly.
"Then don't be honorable," Gawain replied. "You aren't very good at it. Honor is good. Loyalty is better. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Agravaine looked down at his hand. His knuckles and fingertips were bloodsmeared. "I understand. I'll— I understand."
With a slow exhale, as if relieved of a great burden, Gawain nodded. "Alright. Alright. They'll need us down there soon. Go down. I'll follow you. I just need to catch my breath."
"I'll wait," Agravaine said. He sat down in the grass. Wordlessly, Gaheris sat too. From the lonely hillside, they watched the building of the last tomb at Dunpendyr.